with mutilation. In year 17 of the reign of Ramses III a gang
was being shortchanged by a greedy offi cial who used under-
sized measures to distribute rations and then presumably kept
the diff erence for himself. Th e matter was brought to the at-
tention of Akh-pet, another scribe of the vizier, who checked
the grain measure and found that it held 38 hin instead of
the standard 40 (ca. one-half bushel). Th us the workmen had
been receiving 5 percent less than their due.
Th e famous Tomb Robbery Papyri also describe the loot-
ing of graves and temples during the reigns of Ramses IX
and XI, sometimes with the complicity of offi cials who took
bribes to keep silent and release those who were under arrest.
Another mid-Twentieth Dynasty (1196–1070 b.c.e.) papyrus
records charges of large-scale embezzlement and misconduct
against personnel of the temple of Khnum at Elephantine, in-
cluding an unnamed priest. Another papyrus describes the
crimes of a certain Djehutihotep, the chief guard of the Kar-
nak temple. Since this was arguably the most sacred public
place in Egypt, his crimes provide evidence of the extent of
negligence and corruption at the highest levels of the Th eban
administration.
In the prayers of ordinary Egyptians, preserved in let-
ters and documents from the village housing the workers at
Deir el-Medina, there are pleas to the gods for justice aft er all
other doors were closed to them, pleas to hear their petitions,
and pleas to ease their suff ering from the rapidly increasing
corruption in their society. In one prayer, Amun is “the vi-
zier of the poor; he does not accept bribes from the guilty, he
does not speak to the one who witnesses, he does not look to
(favor) the one who makes promises.” In another source, a
lady invokes Amun to protect her from gossip and rumors.
Although these documents portray the dark side of ancient
Egyptian society, there were nonetheless ordinary good peo-
ple who attempted to bring up their off spring with ethics and
good principles.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY HEATHER D. BAKER
In Mesopotamia political power was concentrated in the
hands of the ruler. Th e surviving sources for the exercise of
royal power therefore have to be treated with caution because
they almost always originate with the king and his court; in-
dependent testimony is rare indeed. Th e written documenta-
tion available about political scandal at the highest level tends
to concern episodes when the transition from one ruler to the
next was contested or when a king saw fi t to condemn the
actions of his predecessor or both. In such cases as these the
king whose account survives may have been motivated by a
desire to enhance his own reputation at the expense of a pre-
vious ruler by seeking to question the legitimacy of his reign
or his actions while in offi ce.
Th e circumstances surrounding the death of the Assyrian
king Sennacherib (704–681 b.c.e.) refl ect one such instance of
a troubled succession from one ruler to the next. Many de-tails of what happened are still unclear, because the cunei-
form sources are fragmentary and diffi cult to interpret. Still,
it is clear that there was a plot to murder Sennacherib, who
had taken the unusual step of naming his younger son, Es-
arhaddon, as his successor. Esarhaddon’s case may well have
been promoted by his mother, Naqia, a powerful woman well
versed in palace intrigue. Following the death of his father,
while Esarhaddon was in hiding for safety, his older brothers
fought among themselves for the throne, but on his return
Esarhaddon defeated them in battle. He took the throne and
ruled for 11 years (680–669 b.c.e.).
Another political scandal, of a rather curious nature,
involves the Babylonian king Nabonidus (r. 556–539 b.c.e.),
who left his country to live in apparently self-imposed exile
in Taymā’ (in Saudi Arabia) for 10 years. Although he went to
Arabia in the role of military conqueror, this does not explain
why he remained there for so many years, leaving his son
Belshazzar to rule in Babylonia in his stead. A conventional
view holds that the Babylonian priesthood opposed his un-
orthodox religious beliefs, especially his attempts to promote
the moon god Sin at the expense of the head of the Babylo-
nian pantheon, Marduk. Nabonidus’s own inscriptions hint
at such a background to these events. His successor, Cyrus
the Great, the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, certainly por-
trayed Nabonidus as an oppressive ruler who did not worship
Marduk. Cyrus claimed to have been chosen by Marduk and
to have restored Babylonian religious life to the peaceful state
it had enjoyed before Nabonidus disrupted it.
A more informal insight into the aff airs of state can be
found in the correspondence kept in the royal archives. Of
course, it has to be borne in mind that letters written to the
king were intended to promote the cause of the sender by
casting him in a favorable light, sometimes at the expense of
his rivals. Sometimes the letters contain reports of alleged in-
justice; one scholar, for instance, writes to the king complain-
ing that a local governor had taken away a fi eld of his. It seems
to be expected that the king will intervene personally in cases
such as this where offi cials abused their power.
Th e sources for information about economic scandal and
corruption are of a rather diff erent nature. Some of the Laws
of Hammurabi are concerned with the misappropriation of
property, both private and institutional, and with fraud. Th ey
include, for example, the case of a (female) innkeeper who
gives out short measures of beer. Th ey also set out regulations
governing the conduct of trading ventures so as to protect the
merchants from fraud.
Th e great palace and temple institutions of the ancient
Near East were extremely bureaucratic, and much eff ort
was expended on controlling and recording the movement
of goods between diff erent establishments and their re-
sponsible offi cials. Precious items could be stored in sealed
containers or rooms. Sealing was the ancient equivalent of
a locking mechanism. Th e offi cial in charge would impress
his seal upon a lump of clay applied to the door bolt. When
the room needed to be opened, the sealing would be brokenscandals and corruption: The Middle East 9110895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i911 911 10/10/07 2:30:24 PM